- DISEASES OF SWINE AND OTHER ANIMALS. 431 
fresh dirt. The opinion that corn, almost alone, is sufficient food for 
swine, and contains all that is necessary for the growth and develop- 
. ment of the animal, will not be abandoned by the average farmer until 
- after many costly lessons from experience, while attempting to freight 
their corn crops to market through this uncertain medium of transpor- 
tation. A judicious and intelligent system of in-breeding cannot be 
abandoned without a rapid reversion to the ill-shapen animal of forty ~ 
years ago, and we do not insist that in-breeding, when judigiously and 
‘intelligently practiced, is materially deteriorating in its influence upon 
the health and constitution of swine;.it is only by coupling animals near 
related, that have a constitutional defect or a diseased tendency, and 
where these defects and tendencies are duplicated, that such a course 
becomes positively injurious. In the natural state of swine, when run- 
ning at large and growing up without man’s intervention, in-breeding 
frequently occurs; and the bad tendencies are warded off by the more 
vigorous males fighting off or destroying the feeble ones and becoming 
the sires of the race. Thus nature provides for a “survival of the 
fittest.” -In artificial breeding, the selections made for breeding purposes 
are too often made with special reference to shape and beauty, and too 
little consideration is given to vigor and constitution. There is no prac- 
tical test made in the prize-ring between the most comely male and his 
less handsome brother, as to which is by nature best entitled to become 
the sire; but the breeder makes the choice from other considerations 
than “might makes right.” Good feeding is the counterpart of good 
breeding; but there is a marked difference between good feeding and 
overfeeding or stuffing. Good feeding consists in giving an amount of 
good -healthy food in sufficient variety to provide for the waste of the 
body, and in quantity only sufficient to develop the future growth of the 
animal. Overfeeding or stuffing consists in pushing the amount of food 
to the full assimilative capacity of the animal, with a view to the greatest 
possible amount of excessive flesh. The first is essential to good breed- 
ing; the other is deteriorating to the constitutional vigor of the animal. 
TREATMENT OF THE DISEASE. 
This branch of the subject we might sum up in these few words: No 
remedy was discovered having any marked beneficial -effect upon the 
disease when once fully established; no farmer was found who ever in © 
his own experience tried any remedy or remedies that seemed to exert 
any well marked curative effect upon the disease. Many isolated cases 
were reported; one animal recovered by having the tip end of its tail 
cut off; two, by being saturated with coal-oil, and a few others of like 
absurdity. 
The announcement of the names of the individual members of the 
commission appointed to conduct this examination brought to our notice 
by letter a large number of so-called hog “cholera cures,” which their 
several proprietors asked us to test, or allow them to test in our pres- 
ence. As the requests were coupled with the expressed or understood 
condition that in case said remedies proved efficient cures their proprie- 
tor should have the benefit, for his private use and gain, of an official 
indorsement of the remedy, we did not think the investigation of such 
remedies for such purpose came within the range of duties properly 
devolving upon a commission appointed to make an investigation at the 
public expense for the public good, and therefore declined to answer all 
communications relating to such subjects. What valuable discoveries 
left in temporary obscurity by our course in the matter time alone must 
